Cassini and the Crown Jewel • 2016 • episode "S1E2" • Space Probes

59:12

Brian Cox continues his exploration of the solar system with a visit to a planet that dwarfs all the others: Jupiter. Its size gives it a great power that it has used to manipulate the other planets.

S1E3 • The Planets 2019 • 2019 • Astronomy

97:46

The film, which follows a group of teens at NASA's space camp as they learn about the science and technology behind a trip to Mars, also features commentary by science popularizers Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku; astronaut Suni Williams, and Andrew Weir, author of The Martian. But it's not the grownups who make the film; none of them, with the exception of Williams, has any shot at all of walking on Mars. It's the kids, who can dream that dream, who are the deserved focus of the narrative.

2017 • Astronomy

59:37

As Nasa releases the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, this film tells the inside story of the telescope's construction and the astronomers taking its first picture of distant stars and galaxies. Will it be the deepest image of our universe ever taken? The successor to Hubble, and 100 times more powerful, the James Webb is the most technically advanced telescope ever built. It will look further back in time than Hubble to an era around 200 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies appeared. Webb's primary mission is to capture the faint light from these objects on the edge of our visible universe so that scientists can learn how they formed, but its instruments are so sensitive it could also be the first telescope to detect signs of life on a distant planet. The James Webb Telescope is an ?8 billion gamble on the skills of its engineering team. It’s the first telescope designed to unfold in space – a complicated two-week operation in which 178 release devices must all work - 107 of them on the telescope's sun shield alone. If just one fails, the expensive telescope could become a giant piece of space junk. From its conception in the late 1980s, the construction of Webb has posed a huge technical challenge. The team must build a mirror six times larger than Hubble’s and construct a vast sun shield the size of a tennis court, fold them up so they fit into an Ariane 5 rocket, then find a way to unfold them in space. This film tells the inside story of the James Webb Space Telescope in the words of the engineers who built it and the astronomers who will use it.

2022 • Astronomy

59:04

With his trademark wit, Richard Hammond takes on the ultimate engineering project: how on earth do you build a planet that is just right for life? What do you need to build a planet like ours, and what happens if you get anything wrong? With eye-popping graphics, Richard Hammond opens up a cosmic toolbox to work it out. He's going to build the whole thing, piece by piece, from the top of a two-mile high tower in the Californian desert.

S1E1 • Richard Hammond Builds... • 2013 • Astronomy

11:16

Today on Crash Course Astronomy, Phil invites you to head outside and take a look at all the incredible things you can see with your naked eye.

#2 • Crash Course Astronomy • Astronomy

42:00

We strip apart black holes, one of the most feared objects in the universe, and tear off swirling galaxies of stars, planets, and cosmic dust layer by layer to explore the secrets of these hungry menaces lurking right on our cosmic doorstep.

S1E1 • Strip the Cosmos • 2014 • Astronomy